In order to continue with the dissemination of geographical knowledge in society and to encourage the study of Spanish geography and the interaction of young people, the National Geographic Institute (IGN) has created a series of educational materials aimed at secondary and high school students. To create these contents, the IGN has used their own geographic data, that are shared openly in its Download Center, and maps from its viewers, such as the Interactive National Atlas of Spain.

With these training materials, the IGN aims to provide interesting and attractive information on Spanish geography in an interactive way for young people to become familiar with cartographic systems, maps, coordinates, etc.

Until now, these materials were available in Spanish, but now they can also be found in English, to continue strengthening materials in bilingual education and, at the same time, contributing to their dissemination beyond our borders.

Specifically, these 4 contents have been translated:

1. Territorial inequalities

The activity on territorial inequalities is focused on students between 16 and 18 years old (Bachillerato). The objective is to show in a synthesized way and from different perspectives how human occupation, communication infrastructures or the physical environment (north/south, inland/coast, lowlands/mountains, mainland/islands...) generate a series of differences that characterize the current Spanish society and that are manifested at different scales.

This interactive and educational resource will analyse the territorial inequalities of Spain as a historical process in which economic, political, social and geographical factors come together. For this purpose, data and maps are used not only from the IGN, but also from different entities such as the INE.

2. Economy and urban features

This new activity aimed at high school students is especially focused on knowing the economic characteristics that define 5 Spanish towns (Villablino, Benidorm, El Ejido, Avilés and Zaragoza). In order to study each of them and know their main economic activity, the student must answer several questions by researching through different resources such as: maps, photographs, orthoimages, graphics...

The aim of this exercise is for young people to obtain all the information through the Internet and the different platforms, such as the Geoportal of the National Atlas of Spain, in addition to the topographic resources offered by the National Geographic Institute. What is the ultimate goal? To show students, in the most interactive way, the endless documentation and public information available to citizens and through which they can recognize the characteristics of Spanish populations and learn to distinguish them according to their predominant function.

3. Physical environment and settlement

The third activity is a new exercise in which students between 12 and 16 years old (Secondary) must look for information in several maps to solve the issues raised in the activity.

They must answer questions about why the city has a certain organization, how it is oriented, the layout of its streets and what the reasons are that justify its urban morphology. To answer the questions, they have a series of IGN geolocation services to make the search. These are: CartoCiudad to search for postal codes, streets or house numbers, and the Basic Geographic Nomenclature of Spain for population entities, municipalities and all the toponyms of the country.

4. Spain, 8,000 kilometres of coastline

The following activity delves into the study of the Spanish coastal landscape through definitions, photographs, geographic displays and the use of maps using the National Geographic Information System of Spain (SignA) of the IGN. The exercise, aimed mainly at high school students, tries to show students the different geographical features that are characteristic of the Spanish coast (estuaries, deltas ...), through the management of coordinates in the application SignA.

Natural language processing is making machines (computers) understand human language: spoken or in the form of text. More formally, natural language processing is a hybrid field between computer science and linguistics, which uses different techniques, some of them based on artificial intelligence, to interpret human language.

In this report, prepared by the digital transformation expert Alejandro Alija, we will see how natural language processing is much closer to our day-to-day life than we may initially think. Applications such as automatic translation of texts; sentiment analysis in social networks; the searches we carry out on the internet; the generation of meteorological summaries or the simple requests that we make to our smart speaker, have a strong technological component of natural language processing.

The specific weight that natural language processing has (and will have) in industry and the economy is increasing, since most of the data that is produced in the world (mainly through the Internet) is data in the form of texts and voice (unstructured data). Open data plays a crucial role for this technology. The artificial intelligence algorithms that are used to analyze and understand natural language require a huge amount of quality data to be trained. Many of these data come from the open data repositories of both public and private institutions.

Throughout this report, the history of natural language processing is reviewed, from its inception to the present day. Additionally, the Inspire section describes some of the most representative use cases that harness the potential of natural language processing. The prediction of text when writing a new email, the classification of texts in categories or the generation of false news, are just some of the cases that are reviewed in this report.

Finally, for those more enthusiastic readers, in the Action section, a complete use case (using programming tools) is developed on sentiment analysis in conversations about citizen public debates.

The report ends with a list of resources and readings for those users who wish to continue expanding their knowledge of Artificial Intelligence.

You can download the full report and other additional materials at the following links:

Note: The published code is intended to be a guide for the reader, but may require external dependencies or specific configurations for each user who wants to run it.

The data economy in the European Union exceeded € 375,000 M in 2018, with a growth close to 12% compared to 2017, and it is expected to continue growing to € 555,000 M in 2025. Then, it will reach 4% of the GDP of the EU27.

Given this situation, it is not surprising that an increasing number of companies are emerging in the field of data-based businesses. Starting a new business is not always easy. We need resources, knowledge of the business environment, contacts, a suitable team ... For that reason, it is important to know a series of public and private programs and initiatives that seek to help those braves who want to start their business.

The “Guide to accelerate data-based businesses”, carried out by the Digital Transformation expert Jose Luis Marín, collects a set of useful recommendations aimed at entrepreneurs and start-ups who want to access existing resources to boost and finance the development and launch of products and services that create value from the reuse of public or private data.

The guide is structured in 3 parts:

1. In the first part, an introduction is developed that offers context about the growing market of products and services based on the use and reuse of public or private data. This explains growth forecasts and areas of greatest interest, such as artificial intelligence or smart city solutions.
2. The second part provides a series of recommendations to help select the most appropriate resources to start up a business. For this, the different current mechanisms are explained: accelerators, incubators, public subsidies and private investments. The factors to be considered when filling out an application to access these resources are also explained.
3. Finally, the third part collects some examples of concrete, public and private resources that entrepreneurs and start-ups can use to boost their projects.

You can access the report and other materials through the following links:

We release a new series of reports in datos.gob.es, which under the methodology “Awareness, Inspire, Action” tries to explain how different emerging technologies work and their relationship with open data. The objective is to introduce the reader to the subject through the use of practical, simple and recognizable use cases.

The first report of the series is dedicated to Artificial Intelligence. We can define Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the ability of a machine to mimic human intelligence. This technology will have a great impact on our lives, in two ways: the automation of daily, routine and dangerous tasks and the increase of human capacities, helping to strengthen the work force of the future.

The report has been prepared by Alejandro Alija, expert in Digital Transformation and Innovation, and addresses the following contents:

• The report begins with the Awareness section where the concept of AI is explained in a simple way, briefly outlining two of its sub-fields: Machine Learning and Deep Learning. This section also includes a brief historical review, where the evolution of AI is reviewed, and the factors that make it possible are compiled and explained.
• Next, in the Inspire section, we deep on the AI use cases. For this, the author has taken as reference his two areas of impact: AI as an amplifier of human language, with tasks such as reports translation or conversion of written to spoken language (and vice versa), and AI as an extension of human vision, illustrated through examples of the use of image recognition and classification.
• Finally, in the Action section one of the use case mentioned in the Inspire section is developed: the recognition and classification of images. For them, a set of images has been selected available in the data catalogue of data.gob.es (the photographic archive of the Basque Government: images about Euskadi and the Government activity). Using AI tools, the images have been classified and their description noted. This example can be replicated by the reader since the code necessary for its development has been made available.

The report ends with a list of resources and readings for those users who wish to continue expanding their knowledge about Artificial Intelligence.

You can also download the full report and other additional materials in the following links:

Note: The published code is intended to be a guide for the reader, but may require external dependencies or specific configurations for each user who wants to run it.

One of the economic sectors that is experiencing a high growth in our country is the real estate market. Deciding on a property involves a lot of small decisions: Rent or purchase? In what zone? What services do I need nearby? What is the market price?

As we saw a few months ago, open data can help us make this decision in the most informed way, based on evidence and proven information. In Spain, this trend is also spreading, and more and more public bodies and companies are creating products and services based on public information to facilitate the search for housing.

A business with future potential

In the era of technology and information, real estate agencies are having to incorporate tools that allow them to know the market situation, something that is giving rise to new business models: companies that combine open data with analytics and Big Data to show in a simple way (through visualizations, dashboards, etc.) the market behaviour. Let's see some examples of Spanish companies that are emerging in this sector:

• Urban Data Analytics (uDA) is one of the companies that has emerged in recent years dedicated to segregating and geolocated knowledge of the real estate sector. Through Big Data and Business Intelligence tools, it provides a service of 190 indicators through APIs and an application. These indicators allow instant knowledge of both market and portfolio of a company´s real estate, and are very helpful to real estate agents who seek to make their investments profitable.
• Clicpiso, for his part, is a Spanish startup specializing in homes sale, with a peculiarity that differentiates it from its competitors: Clicpiso carries out the transaction in less than 7 days. For this, it use a valuation algorithm based on Big Data, which also automatically learns from itself to ensure that the processes and valuations of each property are optimized with each new registry.
• Another example is Strabi, who offers dashboards to keep track of home sales in Spain, both free and protected. Thanks to its web quevalemicasa.es citizens will be able to know quickly if their home was well valued at the time of purchase and in what situation it is now (above or below its reference price). This application relies on the use of open data and Business Intelligence tools, based on Open Source technology, for model development, data loading and analytical exploitation.

The involvement of public bodies

But, despite the positive growth data of the sector, we must also take into account the difficulties of a large part of the population in accessing housing, a concern that affects young people above all. The society is demanding measures from public agencies and these measures go through knowing how supply and demand are being managed. The Government of Aragon and the Madrid City Council, among others, have launched tools in recent years that allow integrating all this information:

• Inmuebles de alquiler, Aragón is the application created by the Government of Aragon in 2017 to know the prices of house and premises renting throughout the Autonomous Community. Thanks to it, citizens can search by street name or geolocation, as well as make comparisons through historical data. The objective: that the citizen knows if the price they offer adapts to the reality of the market.
• The Puerta de Alcalá Urban Planning Platform was created by the Madrid City Council in 2018 to collect all the information related to the different areas of the city and manage its urban cycle, from planning to construction. In this way, citizens, companies or administrations have more accessible, transparent, reliable and up-to-date information on municipal action in urban planning.

It is clear that we are facing a complex market, whose future is to boost economic growth while respecting the basic rights of access to housing. The knowledge of the sector, analyzing historical data and preparing future predictions, will allow to better adapt the offer to the demand, promoting a housing stock that responds to the needs of all citizens.

Close your eyes and try to get on without seeing what is around you. Seat you in a wheelchair and determine if it is easy to access public transport and visit your favourite restaurant.

Perhaps you have not tried to live these experiences, but you could imagine the result. Public administrations are making an effort to make our environment more accessible, but it is true that there is still work to be done and people with disabilities face barriers that limit their movements.

To try to make these daily situations easier, simple applications have emerged in recent years that provide useful information about the environment using open data. The objective: to make the daily life of people with disabilities easier.

Here are some examples:

• Lazzus is an assistant created by Neosentec that accompanies blind and visually impaired people in their daily journeys, creating an auditory field of vision. The application provides relevant information about the environment, such as the situation of crosswalks, crossroads, stairs, nearby establishments, etc. Simply point a direction with the mobile to inform you about the elements around. It also allows you to customize searches, activating filters or saving frequent points as favourites.
• Mapcesible is an initiative of Fundación Telefónica, COCEMFE and ILUNION. It is a collaborative platform that allows mapping the accessibility of different places so that people with reduced mobility can plan their daily trips. Information is obtained in two ways. The application incorporates 14 datasets from official bodies such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment or different municipalities. In addition, any citizen, with or without reduced mobility, can assess the accessibility of the places they visit. They just have to register with an email and answer a series of simple questions that allow to quickly define how accessible a place is. Some examples of questions are “Is it close to public transport?” or “Has it an adapted toilet?”. There are currently more than 22,000 mapped spaces.
• Disable park is a web platform and mobile application created by 3dids, which offers all available information on the exact location of parking spaces for people with reduced mobility. Its objective is not only to improve the day-to-day life of people with reduced mobility and their companions, but also seeks to raise awareness among companies and individuals through the “sponsorship of places”: users who wish can pay an amount per year to put their name, or a friend´s name, to a parking space. The application also allows to report when a place is occupied by a vehicle without accreditation or add new parking spaces that were not previously mapped in the application.
• Sin barreras is a web application consisting of a search engine for accessible spaces, adapted parking lots and architectural barriers. The user only has to enter a location or short description to see the results or add new elements not previously included in the application. Sinbarrera.es received a grant in the form of a Project Construction Grant from the Youth Initiative Cabinet of the Junta de Extremadura, and was also awarded with the Otaex Universal Accessibility Award 2012.

These 4 examples of applications demonstrate what can be done from the open data. An opportunities increase if we also enrich the public data available with the information collected by anonymous citizens through citizen science initiatives. All this information not only help people with disabilities to move in an easier way, but it can also help to determine the gaps and take the necessary measures to get cities without barriers.

Do you know more examples of applications that can improve the lives of people with disabilities? Tell us in the comments.

By 2020, the amount of data stored in IT systems will be doubled compared to 2018. Given this scenario, it seems logical that the demand for professionals with analytical and data management capabilities is growing, something we have already spoken about on numerous occasions.

One way to boost the learning of these skills is through open data and its use in the classroom as another educational resource. The development of collaborative projects where students have to search and filter information, analyse data or generate visualizations have a place in almost all subjects. With this type of project, students can acquire a great diversity of capacities: from the use of technological tools and the capacity for analysis and argumentation, to the improvement of so-called soft skills such as teamwork - also fundamental for professional development -.

The first step: train teachers

One of the fundamental pillars for open data to be integrated into classrooms is the previous training of teachers. In this sense, programs such as Use (Open Research) Data in Teaching project (UDIT) try to help higher education professors to be able to use open research data in their classes. Among other activities, the website offers courses that show good practices and examples of learning activities based on the reuse of open data.

Along the same lines, the National Library of Spain and Red.es have created the BNEscolar educational platform with digital content prepared from the documentary collection of the Hispanic Digital Library. The website includes a search engine to facilitate the location of the desired resources, as well as workshops, videos, educational sequences and interactive challenges (such as an escape game). The contents of BNEscolar are aimed at pre-university students, with special focus on the latest levels of Primary and Secondary Education.

Contests and activities to boost the use of data in classrooms

In addition to these platforms, concrete activities, contests and challenges that seek to promote the use of open data among the youngest citizens are also increasingly common. Examples are the Reto BCN Dades Obertes or the Open Data Contest of Castilla y León, which included a special prize for students in each of the main categories, as well as a specific category for the creation of teaching resources that could be used in the classrooms. Another example is Escuelas Comciencia initiative, created by the Observatory of Scientific Communication and the Cyberimaginary research group, where students learn to carry out a research project using open data.

But we can also find such initiatives internationally. The programs developed by Technovation stand out here, aimed at identifying problems in student communities and solving them using disruptive technologies. An example is Technovation Girls, aimed at girls around the world. This program seeks to teach girls how to identify a problem and brainstorm ideas to solve it, and create an application to launch a business. Also noteworthy is the AI ​​Family challenge contest, which brings learning to the family environment, another of the fundamental foundations of children's education. The AI ​​Family Challenge invites families to learn about Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and solve a problem using data tools and AI systems. The original approach of the contest, in which parents and children combine their abilities and learn together in a fun way, has driven the success: 7,500 people from 13 countries participated in the first edition. The deadline for submitting to the second edition will be open until February 2020.

The importance of government involvement

The results obtained in all the previously highlighted activities have been very positive, clearly showing the benefits of incorporating open data in classrooms: the improvement of technological and analytical capabilities, but also of critical thinking.

But if you want to go one step further, it would be advisable to incorporate open data directly into educational plans. This is what Switzerland has done through the Lehrplan21 plan, adopted to standardize education in the 21 German-speaking and multilingual cantons. The plan includes the learning of basic concepts related to data in the educational itinerary: structures, formats, management and analysis of databases, etc.

These types of measures are essential if we want to promote more active learning, where open data helps students to better understand their environment, in a reasoned way, to become the professionals that our future needs.

Open data is one of the key elements of smart cities. The collection of information, its analysis and its use make possible to address many of the challenges facing cities today, such as the creation of public services that respond to a growing population.

Among all the open datasets that are published related to cities, real-time data provides multiple advantages. Knowing the situation of our cities in real time can serve to make decisions and improve efficiency in urban mobility, energy management or environmental conditions, among other aspects.

In this context, the report "Open data in real time: use cases for smart cities" seeks to boost the opening of this type of data showing the advantages of its use. The report analyses the relationship between open data and smart cities, and shows a series of datasets that local entities should publish in real time, according to the report “Open Data 2019 - 40 datasets to be published by Local Entities”,  elaborated by the FEMP (Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces). These data sets belong to the fields of transport and mobility - public car park, public bicycles, traffic, public transport - and the environment - air quality and noise pollution.

Each dataset has been analysed highlighting some use cases and reuse examples, paying special attention to the positive impact they have on citizens. The technologies involved in its deployment, the stakeholders or future challenges, among other factors, have also been addressed.

The conclusions of the analysis are collected in each of the files that you can see below:

Datasets

 

You can also download the full report and other additional materials using the following links:

In the digital world, data becomes a fundamental asset for companies. Thanks to them, they can better understand their environment, business and competition, and make convenient decisions at the right time.

In this context, it is not surprising that an increasing number of companies are looking for professional profiles with advanced digital capabilities. Workers who are able to search, find, process and communicate exciting stories based on data.

The report "How to generate value from data: formats, techniques and tools to analyse open data" aims to guide those professionals who wish to improve the digital skills highlighted above. It explores different techniques for the extraction and descriptive analysis of the data contained in the open data repositories.

The document is structured as follows:

• Data formats. Explanation of the most common data formats that can be found in an open data repository, paying special attention to csv and json.
• Mechanisms for data sharing through the Web. Collection of practical examples that illustrate how to extract data of interest from some of the most popular Internet repositories.
• Main licenses. The factors to be considered when working with different types of licenses are explained, guiding the reader towards their identification and recognition.
• Tools and technologies for data analysis. This section becomes slightly more technical. It shows different examples of extracting useful information from open data repositories, making use of some short code fragments in different programming languages.
• Conclusions. A technological vision of the future is offered, with an eye on the youngest professionals, who will be the workforce of the future.

The report is aimed at a general non-specialist public, although those readers familiar with data treatment and sharing o in the web world will find a familiar and recognizable reading.

Next, you can then download the full text, as well as the executive summary and a presentation.

Note: The published code is intended as a guide for the reader, but may require external dependencies or specific settings for each user who wishes to run it.

In the current context of digital transformation, all sectors are adapting to respond to the efficiency and agility improvement needs that society demands today. One of the areas where this change is most necessary is the agricultural and forestry sector.

The growth of the world population, climate change, or the depopulation of rural areas, something of particular concern in the specific case of Spain, make a paradigm shift necessary: a higher quantity of food must be generated, more quickly and sustainable with the environment.

To deepen this problem and its possible solutions, from the Aporta Initiative we have prepared the report “How open data can boost the agricultural and forestry sector”. The objective of the report is to promote the use of open data in the process of digital transformation of the agricultural and forestry sectors. Additionally, the report also focuses on water management as an element of great importance in the value chain.

The report is structured as follows:

• The first part begins with the analysis of the role that digital transformation is playing in solving the main challenges facing the agricultural and forestry sectors, highlighting the open data contribution as part of this process.
• In the second part, a series of repositories are compiled to find open data sets potentially useful to support digital transformation in these sectors.
• For the third part of the report, a series of relevant use cases have been selected in digital transformation in the agricultural and forestry sectors, both nationally and internationally and in which open data have a prominent role.

The report ends with the presentation of a series of conclusions drawn from the analysis work carried out.

It is therefore a must-read document for those interested in promoting improvements in areas such as precision agriculture, promoting a more efficient and sustainable agricultural and forestry sector. It should also be noted its great usefulness as a mechanism to understand the current scenario and source of inspiration for the participants in the Aporta 2019 Challenge.